Berserker Wars (Omnibus) Read online

  Iskander Baza had a question for Fourth Adventurer: “You say their species just—came into existence recently? How recent is recent?”

  “For all I can tell, as short a period as one of your own lifetimes. It is hard to say.”

  “No offense, Adventurer, but that sounds incredible. I mean, how can you thinkif your brain is the equivalent of a hard vacuum? In that short time they’ve developed a—a language? How long are their individual lives?”

  “You would not find it so incredible if your own knowledge of the Galaxy was greater.”

  “Huh.” Even Iskander seemed unable to come up with a clever response to that.

  “But I admit my estimate of their evolutionary speed may not be accurate. What I can see of their time frame is only their own perception of it. As it exists in their minds. I find it hard to translate from that to your frames of time, or to mine. I guess, and estimate.”

  Simeon was thinking that the aliens were certainly weird by Earth-descended standards. He supposed that it worked both ways. To us the aliens were mirror-image, photographic-negative, transparent, nebulousbeings. To them, thought Simeon, we are—what? Voices from a hurtling lump of metal, very doubtfully alive at all?

  It was a weird picture, the ship with himself and the others in it, seen from outside that way. He wondered if some of it at least was spillover from the laboring Carmpan mind nearby.

  Now that the situation appeared to have quieted down, at least temporarily, Simeon would have liked to duck back to his berth and finish dressing. But there would be no getting away from battle stations just now.

  There was another brief flurry of alarm. One or more of the nebular beings had come aboard ship again, uninvited. Domingo saw one of the things directly this time, a gray transparent presence moving between him and the instruments a meter from his face. A moderate heat wave in the air would have been substantial by comparison. But the creature was gone again before he could do more than start to react.

  The crew continued to experiment with their field generators. Certain fields slowed or deflected the movements of the aliens, while others appeared to cause them discomfort. And yet other types of field created a barrier that the beings could penetrate only with the greatest difficulty if at all. To enclose the whole ship in that kind of barrier, though, might be beyond the capabilities of the present equipment.

  Meanwhile the creatures, basically undeterred, continued to investigate the ship.

  “Adventurer, tell them to stop coming aboard. It causes problems for us.”

  “I will ask them. I suggest that it is not advisable to order them to stop.”

  “That’s fine, if they’re amenable to being asked. If not, I’ll have to find some way to make it a statement instead of a request.”

  Whatever method Fourth Adventurer used appeared to be effective. The visitors departed shortly.

  The ED component of the Pearl‘s crew began to speculate on what it might mean that these creatures—Nebulonswas a name for them that seemed to spring up out of nowhere—were in fact a much younger race than the human race of Earth, had much more recently undergone the step of speciation that brought them into intelligence.

  Domingo had only a limited interest in the subject. He did not forget that, despite Fourth Adventurer’s opinion, there was no certain evidence that the suspicions of Iskander and Spence were wrong; these Nebulons might, for all anyone on board the Pearlcould tell, be creations of the berserkers, intended somehow to spell doom for ED humanity.

  Others were aware of the possibility, too. “How could berserkers create a life form so complex? We can’t do that, and we’re supposed to know more biology than the damned machines do.”

  Through the Carmpan, some of the aliens once more put forward their own suspicions that it was the solid, incredibly massive ED people who were allied with the berserkers; in their view, they said, the two types of entity had so much in common, it was hard to believe anything else. But yet the two forms, berserker and human ship, could be distinguished from each other—ED vessels almost always contained life, the dead-metal killers very rarely so.

  Another distinguishing factor was the fact that the human ships did not always and routinely kill as they passed through the shoals and drifts of nebular life; some of the aliens took that as evidence that these objects were not necessarily allied with their enemies. Sometimes the ships killed, harvesting or sampling. But the intelligent nebular-theme humans also killed, ingesting concentrations of energy, patterns, complexity from the lower forms, often the same types that the ships and colonies also harvested.

  By now the minutes since the first encounter with the aliens had lengthened into an hour. It felt to Simeon like the longest hour he had ever lived through, except perhaps the hour of the fight in which Wilma had been killed.

  By now it had become plain, through steady observation of the aliens, that these nebular-theme humans possessed a faster means of travel through the nebula than either ED humans or berserker machines had ever been able to attain.

  Fourth Adventurer, on this point, offered the observation that the nebular-theme creatures were able to detect the thin-vacuum or hard-vacuum interstices in nebular turbulence. The obvious point was commented on: the same ability, or some variation of it, allowed them to get into a spaceship’s hull without opening a hatch or making a noticeable hole.

  Through the Carmpan, the creatures acknowledged that they could use this ability to get at berserkers, too, if the berserkers could be taken unawares and were moving slowly. But the enemy was aware of the Nebulons’ existence now, and such attacks were no longer a practical possibility.

  “Cap, if they can knock out a berserker somehow, they can knock out this ship.”

  Domingo remained calm. “I see that, Ike. Go on, Fourth Adventurer.”

  The dead-metal killers, after losing a unit or two and coming close to losing others, had not only developed effective repelling countermeasures and barrier fields but killing fields as well. But those worked only at short ranges, and the berserkers still had trouble hunting and killing the nebular people.

  “They admit to us that a killing field exists. Seems a little naive.”

  Benkovic snorted. “Maybe it’s meant to seem that way.”

  The discovery of another intelligent species, another theme of Galactic humanity; it had to be one of the rarest events in history. Everyone aboard the ship was shaken by it, even in the midst of other problems. Almost everyone. Domingo had taken it in stride. He did not even appear to find it particularly interesting, except as it might affect his chances of hunting down Leviathan. Not until now had Simeon fully appreciated the intensity of the captain’s monomania.

  The captain demanded to know more from the nebular creatures, all that any of them knew about berserkers. And he was even more interested in the apparent fact that these people might be able to help him find Leviathan.

  “Ask them if they know one of the dead-metal killers in particular. Ask them if they know Old Blue.”

  The Fourth Adventurer somehow determined that they did.

  They had a special name for Old Blue too, which Fourth Adventurer translated as best he could into the language he shared with the ED humans: Dead-Metal-That-Bears-The-Radiance-Of-Death.

  CHAPTER 19

  Fourth Adventurer said: “There is one among our guides whose mind is more clearly open to me than the others. It is with that one I hold most of my communication.”

  The captain grunted. It was a satisfied sort of sound. “I thought that might be the case. What do you call this one? Or what name should we use, for him, or her?”

  “I can tell you nothing meaningful about the names of Nebulons. But I find a definite suggestion of femininity in that person’s mind.”

  Simeon, listening in, wondered how a Carmpan would judge that quality in a human of a theme never before encountered.

  Domingo asked: “This one is some sort of leader among them, then?”

  Fourth Adventurer answe
red thoughtfully. “Though I am sure there are leaders among them, I am not sure that she is one of them.”

  The captain nodded. It would not have made much sense—or at least Domingo thought it would not—to apply such terms as leaderor followerto Fourth Adventurer, either. From the centuries of knowing—or rather failing to know—the Carmpan, the more thoughtful among Earth-descended folk had learned not to project their own psychology onto other themes.

  Fourth Adventurer continued: “Let us agree to call their spokesperson Speaker, at least among ourselves. If she is not really a leader, even loosely speaking, she is in close touch with those who are.”

  “Do you suppose,” Simeon asked after a brief silence, “they might be starting to make up names for us, too?”

  “Probably none we’d want to hear,” said Branwen. No one else aboard ship was ready to offer an opinion.

  The Carmpan might have refrained from answering because his mind was busy on another channel. He said to Domingo: “I have asked more questions of those who surround us on the subject of Leviathan. Unfortunately they seem to have no knowledge that will be immediately helpful to us in our search.”

  Domingo softly profaned the gods of little rocks in space and those of distant galaxies.

  “But wait … they now have more to tell me. Ah. You will be more pleased by this, Captain.”

  With that, Fourth Adventurer fell silent. After he had remained quiet for some time, evidently in mental communion with the ethereal beings around the ship, he announced that he had an offer to relay to Domingo.

  There was something, evidently another berserker project of some kind, that was bothering the Nebulons particularly. If Domingo and the beings with him inside the weighty metal could help the Nebulons eliminate this extremely objectionable thing, whatever it was, Speaker and those with her would be eternally grateful. “At least,” Fourth Adventurer concluded, “I believe that to be the sense of what they are endeavoring to communicate.”

  “Another project, did you say? Does that mean a fighting machine? A base?”

  “The thought as it comes to me from them is vague, Captain. They do not understand what this project is, except that it is harmful to them.”

  “But where is this thing? What is it like? Can’t you be a little more explicit?”

  “I regret that I cannot. It is in just the form of such a vague concept that the message comes to me.”

  Still the captain was quick to make up his mind. “Very well. We will help them if we can. Tell them I accept—provisionally. Can you tell them that?”

  “We shall see.”

  “If it is something I can help them with, I’ll do so. Provided they then do what they can to help me do what I want. I need allies, Adventurer. I need, I want, all the help that I can get. You don’t necessarily have to tell them all of that.”

  “I believe I understand your position, Captain. Let me try to convey it.”

  The translator was silent for a while, and then announced: “They confer among themselves now, Captain. I think they will be ready soon to lead us on. To this ‘berserker project,’ whatever it may be.”

  “And how far away from here is this—never mind. I know, you can’t tell.”

  “That is correct.”

  Spence Benkovic spoke up suddenly. “Maybe we ought to confer among ourselves too, while we have the chance. Before we just follow them somewhere.”

  “Confer about what?” Domingo asked him sharply.

  “I know I signed on to go hunting, Captain. Okay, I’ll go. But something new and very important has come up since then. I mean just finding these—these people, or whatever they are. That’s changed things. We’re playing a whole new game. We can’t just ignore that, and go on about our business as if it hadn’t happened.”

  “The business of this voyage is what I say it is, Benkovic. But let me hear what you suggest.”

  “I suggest that we have to do something right away to tell the Space Force, tell people in general. Great gods and little berserkers, we’re not talking like just finding another planetoid here. This has—has meaning.I mean, a whole unknown theme of humanity, native to the space within the nebula.”

  Domingo was not impressed by that argument. “Just how do you propose to reveal the wonderful news? There’s no way of knowing where Gennadius and his fleet are now. We’d have to go all the way back to Four Twenty-five. And I’ve just undertaken to help these people, not run out on them.”

  Benkovic muttered something but was unable to come up with an effective answer.

  Simeon thought suddenly: Spence wants out of this trip now. He wants the ship to go immediately to a world somewhere where he can get off, even if it means breaking a contract and having to give back money. Why now, all of a sudden? Why, Benkovic could take anything, except that there was only one good-looking woman on board and she went for someone else, if it was only for a day or for an hour.

  Domingo meanwhile was proceeding with his argument: “If the prospects for finding Gennadius aren’t good, then what chance have we of finding our way back here, once we leave, and linking up again with these people we’ve discovered? How big a range of territory do they occupy, Fourth Adventurer?”

  “I have no means of knowing that as yet.” The Carmpan shook his head, an ED gesture he had adopted, consciously or unconsciously, from the start of the voyage.

  “We’ve been led here,” said the captain. Simeon wasn’t sure if the older man was referring to the Carmpan’s advice, or just what. “I’m not about to simply walk away at this point.”

  “We could drop a courier,” Branwen suggested. The Pearlhad begun this hunt with two robot message couriers tucked away in storage.

  The captain appeared to consider that suggestion carefully. “I don’t think so. We might well need both of our couriers later.” Domingo sounded as if he were still reluctant to bring the Space Force in on his hunt at all.

  “Our guides announce that they are now ready to lead us, Captain,” came the voice of Fourth Adventurer. “To show us the project of dead metal. That phrase is as close as I can translate what they are thinking. But their readiness, and even their impatience, are manifest to me.”

  Iskander asked suddenly: “How about their trustworthiness?”

  “As I said before, I do not think that they are lying to me. To judge beyond that would involve an estimate of what their thoughts will be in a future situation. I regret I cannot do it. Their minds are too new to me, too alien. Their reliability, as you would perceive it, I cannot judge.”

  “Ah,” said Baza. “Maybe they’re more like us than I thought.”

  “They can’t be a whole lot more impatient than I am,” Domingo said. “I want to find out about this berserker project. Tell them to lead on.”

  “I shall.”

  For a few seconds nothing happened, or at least no change occurred that was perceptible to the ED crew. Then suddenly the space immediately around the ship was clear in every direction of the mysterious forms. The beings who had been swarming in the close vicinity of the Pearlhad moved away.

  “But where?” the captain muttered, pressing his headlink to his forehead, conjuring up new electronic visions with his instruments to augment those already on the stages and screens before him. “Ah. There they go.”

  Domingo took thought purposefully, easing the Pearlforward. A voyage through the nebula under the guidance of the nebular-theme humans had begun.

  Three of the Pearl‘s crew were posted on a regular watch, three others officially relieved. Simeon had a chance to get back to his berth and finish dressing.

  In another hour the voyage had settled into a routine. The routine was to persist for several days with little change.

  Gradually, with the storm out of the way, the people on the Pearlwere able to work out at least a tentative idea of their general position inside the Milkpail. The guides remained always in sight, and always clustered now in one direction. From that position they kept darting ahead, as if rel
uctant to believe that the heavy ship really could not keep up with them and wanting to urge it on to greater efforts.

  The Nebulons doubtless observed, as did the humans inside the ship, the pinging of nebular molecules and larger particles against the leading shields that plowed an open pathway for the advancing hull. The Carmpan proclaimed his inability to tell what the Spacedwellers made of the sight.

  Apparently the Nebulons, or Spacedwellers—that was another name that had popped up as if out of nowhere and had quickly been adopted among the Pearl‘s crew as an alternate title for their guides—employed a means of propulsion similar to that of advanced spacedrives. Branwen and Simeon theorized that this necessarily involved tapping into the fabric of spacetime itself, riding a flow of natural forces rather than burning fuel. But given the Spacedwellers’ lack of hardware, they must be managing their tinkering on a microbiological scale.

  Despite Fourth Adventurer’s repeated testimony regarding their chronic impatience, the guides paused at fairly frequent intervals. During these breaks they could be observed among shoals of the common microlife, evidently feeding; Fourth Adventurer gave his opinion that they were probably resting as well.

  “Speaker asks me how, if my companions and myself are really living things here inside this metal shell, we can remain here without ever coming out to eat. I have explained as best I can that our usual food is as heavy and solid as we are. But I am not at all sure that she believes me.”

  Aboard the Pearl, other members of the crew, Galway and Baza in particular, speculated on the course of evolution that might have produced such creatures as the ones flitting around them.

  Benkovic also began a round of speculation among the ED crew about the reproductive systems of their guides. There seemed to be more of the creatures now, in the group leading the ship, than there had been only a little while ago. Of course the most likely explanation, in ED terms, would be simply that more of the beings had joined the group as the journey progressed; but none had been observed to actually approach the group or enter it.